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His Dark Materials:Editing policy
This policy helps guide editors in best practices regarding editing and writing: Editing *We strongly recommend that all users use the ; it is less buggy than the , and less liable to lead to mistakes that look like vandalism. You can set your to use the source editor by default. *'Do not' edit articles with WYSIWYG HTML editors (especially not Microsoft Word) unless you are willing to yourself run the article through a plain-text editor and strip out all the fluff before you post it. You might get lucky and have another editor do this for you (assuming they have the time and patience), but in the normal course of events, it is vastly more likely that your edit will just get reverted. *When editing pages, try to fill in the "Summary" box above the Save/Preview buttons before saving, and make sure that you fill it in with something useful describing the edit you made and, if it's not obvious, why. For example, "fixed spelling error" or "added fun fact" or "reverted edits by 127.0.0.1" are all acceptable. Saying "made some changes" is not helpful because it's information that we already have. Making your Summaries accurate and useful makes it vastly easier for the rest of us to keep track of Recent Changes and keeps everybody happy. *If you're making a minor edit (e.g. fixing a spelling error or tweaking formatting), try to remember to check the "This is a minor edit" button below the Summary box before saving the page. Again, this will make things easier for the rest of us. *As with any Wiki article, please do not make drastic changes and rewrites without the consent of other editors. Exceptions can be made if the article is in obviously bad shape. Otherwise, use the talk page to discuss changes to articles. *Do not make edits involving adding information without also adding references using the reference tags (e.g. ). For example, Northern Lights would create a reference to Northern Lights. Check out our reference guide for more information on how to accomplish this. Writing style ;"In-universe" point of view For the sake of consistency, all articles written about people, places, or things within the His Dark Materials multiverse have to be written from an "in-universe" perspective rather than from a "real world" perspective: for example, "Lyra Silvertongue was '''the main character in the His Dark Materials series'"'' should be changed to "Lyra Silvertongue was '''a young girl who grew up at Jordan College'". This rule naturally does not apply for subjects ''outside the His Dark Materials multiverse, like Philip Pullman, publishers, and the books. Subjects that exist both in the real world and in the HDM multiverse should be written about from an in-universe perspective and include the template at the top. ;Tense Articles should be written in the past tense, as if the editor is writing from a point in the future after the events in the series have taken place. This is to maintain a consistent and uniform feel to the articles, and to eliminate ambiguity caused by switching tenses in the middle of an article. ;Spelling Since the His Dark Materials series is originally a British series, the British editions are the final source on spelling and phrases. Small examples are such things as the usage of alternate spellings like "colour" instead of "color", or "Spectre" instead of "Specter." We should strive to remain consistent with the British versions wherever applicable. Where there exist multiple spellings, redirects should be made to the page with the British variant. WikiText Style * Article headers should be in the form Header , not the form Header . * Things like alethiometer and alethiometer are pointless, so only alethiometer should be used. Links Links are an important part of a wiki article, and provide users access to relevant pages. The first time a subject is mentioned in an article, there should be a link (generally with a full name rather than any shortened version of the subject name). Any further mentions of the subject should not have a link, unless the article is lengthy and the subject has not been linked to in a significant portion of the page. All links must where possible be in short form: Other * Do not go adding last names to links unless you have a valid reason to do so (e.g. if full character name hasn't been used earlier in the article). Full names should not be abused to bypass redirects. * Do not change page numbers in ref tags to have a leading zero. Going around the wiki and changing 3 to 03 despite most pages sticking to 3 doesn't improve the wiki at all and just adds pointless edits, just stick with 3. * If you don't know enough information on a topic, or you know there's more to an article than what is currently on the page, then mark it as a stub. To do so, just add this template to the bottom of the article: Naming of articles Article naming of a character or person will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions: *An article's title should contain the full first and last names *An article's title should contain the last name used most commonly throughout the His Dark Materials series, regardless of marriage. **For example: Use Lyra Silvertongue instead of Lyra Belacqua. *Titles are not to be used in an article's title. A listing of such titles may be found here. **Titles include: Mr., Mrs., Lord (and derivatives) **The exception for this is a character who is only known by a single name, first or last, aside from their title. ***For example: We only know Lord Asriel's first name, so "Lord" is included in the article's title. However, Lord Carlo Boreal's first and last name is known, so "Lord" is not used in his article's title. Article naming of other subjects will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions: *Article titles should be in their singular form. To make a link plural, all you need to do is add the necessary suffix after the closing brackets of a link. (e.g. to make "witches" link to the page "witch", use witches) As you can see, making singular forms plural will be easier than making the plural form singular. **The two sole exceptions are the "mulefa" and "Breathless Ones" articles, as the singular, "zalif", is both unlike the plural and very rarely used. *The use of an article (a, an, the) in an article's title is only acceptable when it is a part of the name. **For example: The Subtle Knife is acceptable because that is the full title of a book. The General Oblation Board is not acceptable, as the correct name is merely General Oblation Board.)